Review articles

Many companies have tried to make a large, note-friendly smartphone, but none have succeeded quite as well as Samsung. While the first Galaxy Note was rather large and lacking in refinement, Samsung has steadily improved the line, this year releasing the brand new Galaxy Note 3, and it has some true competition for the first time.

Having followed Nest and the success they were having with their connected thermostat over the past two years and after making the decision to replace all incandescent light bulbs in my apartment with energy efficient LED units, I also decided it would be as good a time as any to see exactly what the Nest was all about.

The WD Black2 sports both a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD in a single package. Unlike other hybrid configs such as Seagate's Momentus XT which combine ample magnetic storage with a little NAND, the Black2 crams both technologies into one drive too, but it simply does what desktop users have been doing for years by making the flash portion a primary boot drive with the disk serving as bulk storage.

Lenovo is well-known for its diverse portfolio of offerings spanning home and business. Gaming, on the other hand, is one area Lenovo has mostly ignored over the years. With that in mind, we introduce to you the Erazer X700 -- Lenovo’s first stab at a PC tailored for gamers. Features which qualify the X700 as a full-fledged gaming PC are its unique exterior, performance-centered parts, ample tool-free expandability, liquid cooling and OneKey overclocking. Sound good so far?

With the release of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, many people think that PC gaming is obsolete. Nothing could be further from the truth though, as it's proven time and time again that graphic power for the PC grows…

Every year Apple refreshes their tablet line-up with new hardware and new features. The full sized iPad got faster, lighter, slimmer and even received a new name (iPad Air), while the second-generation mini is more impressive than ever, thanks to a major update. This new iPad mini comes with a high-resolution 7.9-inch panel whose resolution is on-par with the Air at 2048 x 1536. Not only that, but Apple’s new A7 SoC is included, alongside a larger battery in a shell that’s nearly identical in size to the original iPad mini.

The Xbox One is a testament to Microsoft's towering ambition. It represents their desire not only to occupy a place in your home entertainment center, but to lumber straight into the center of it. The Xbox One I've been using for the past week and a half is significantly different from that announced back in May. The relatively short period of time Microsoft has had to make so many changes is evident in the console and its software. Xbox One is clearly coming in hot, and many of its features aren't quite complete. It ain't easy evaluating a work in progress. This is going to be a long review.

Despite its low price – $349 for an unlocked 16 GB model – the Nexus 5 packs top-of-the-line specifications. Internally there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC with a 2.3 GHz quad-core CPU, 2 GB of RAM, LTE radios worldwide (a first for Nexus devices) and a 2,300 mAh battery, complemented by a 4.95-inch 1080p IPS display. Let’s not forget the camera either, which is an 8-megapixel unit and will hopefully prove much more capable than the Nexus cameras of the past.

The iPad is now on its fifth iteration and with it comes a new name, the iPad Air. True to the moniker, Apple’s latest full-size tablet has been put on a significant diet. It retains the same 9.7-inch display but with a bezel that is 43 percent thinner along with a 20 percent reduction in overall thickness.

You have to respect a company or organization that tries to reinvent itself. It’s never easy, it usually comes with a lot of criticism and birthing pains, and if they make it to the other side, they’ll never be the…

Enter the Xperia Z1. New Snapdragon 800 SoC. New 20.7-megapixel Exmor RS camera. New aluminium body. In many respects, this is what Sony was aiming for with the original Xperia Z: a solid set of features to lure any smartphone buyer including waterproofing. It may be out a little later than your Galaxy S4 or HTC One, but there’s no doubting that the Z1 is a high-end handset to take Sony into 2014.

How good is the PlayStation 4? Ask me in five years. Ask me after I figure out whether God of War is headed in the right direction, after I learn whether it has become unfathomable to play a console game without livestreaming it. These days, many game reviews aren't really done when they first run. They can explain parts of the game accurately at launch, but online communities shape these games. That's true, too, for the surprisingly online-centric PlayStation 4.

As if it wasn't already fast enough, Gigabyte has armed its GTX 780 Ti with a massive air cooler that allows its variant of Nvidia's newcomer with a 17% overclock. The company has also been working on other overclocked GTX 780s, including a "GHz Edition" allowing a core clock of 1.02GHz or 18% higher than the standard version of the card.

Even if the Asrock M8's style is not your thing, there's less room to argue that this is a unique gaming PC barebones kit and that was enough to earn our attention. We've been impressed with the looks of previous Asrock products -- including its mini PCs -- but the M8 is a clear step up having been designed by BMW Group DesignworksUSA, the driving force behind Thermaltake's Level 10 chassis, a case as overpriced as it is iconic.

AMD surprised everyone last month by delivering Titan-like performance for nearly half the price with the R9 290X. However before Nvidia can strike back, it'll have to eat another blow in the form of the new Radeon R9 290. At $400, the R9 290 offers fantastic value when you consider it still packs much of what made the R9 290X a GeForce killer.

The world is on the brink of war, and it looks like you and the rest of the Tombstone squad are riding that fine, dangerous line that circles all around it. Like almost everything hinges on you carrying out one mission on top of the other. There are these big set-piece moments—the Michael Bay explosions and extravagantly violent and precarious situations you and your squadmates find yourselves in—that set an exciting tone for all of a few seconds.

The GeForce GTX Titan blew us all away eight months ago with its mindblowingly fast GPU. The catch, of course, was that Nvidia wanted $1,000 for it. In a sense, the Radeon R9 290X could be considered AMD's Titan, as it takes the Tahiti architecture and stuffs with nearly 2000 million more transistors. It's the most complex GPU AMD has created and by no coincidence, it's also one of the most expensive, but before you click away, that's "only" $550, which is substantially cheaper than Nvidia's solution.

Windows 8.1 is the start of something new for Microsoft. It’s a dynamic shift in strategy for its core OS and it is also a refinement to Windows 8, one that will likely shift the tide in terms of user…

As an incremental update, the new iPhone 5s borrows heavily from its predecessor, building upon its solid foundation yet adding an all-new 64-bit A7 processor, the Touch ID fingerprint reader, a totally revamped operating system, while also learning a few new software tricks that enhance how the camera operates.

LG has jam-packed nearly every feature you can imagine into the G2, from a powerful Qualcomm Snadpdragon 800 SoC and a 1080p display, to an optically stabilized camera and finely tuned software. LG has clearly thrown everything they can into this device, but does it stand above the rest of the flagship pack?

AMD announced the next generation Volcanic Islands GPUs last month at their GPU14 Tech Day event in Hawaii. Previous years have seen the release of a new GPU generation every year which makes the Radeon HD 7000's shelf life surprising, even more so considering the majority of the new RX 200 series cards rebadges from existing HD 7000 products.

The RX 200 series will consist of the Radeon R7 240, R7 250, R7 260X, R9 270X, R9 280X and later this month the R9 290 and R9 290X. Confused yet? Well let us try and clear a few things up.

On paper, the naming of the HTC One mini makes perfect sense. The mini is a mid-to-high-end aluminum-clad smartphone with a 4.3-inch display, designed for those who want a premium device without the massive size that’s often associated with its bigger and faster brother, as well as other Android 'superphones'.

But will HTC’s tradeoffs have too much of an effect on the overall product, keeping it from being a great 4.3-inch device? Or will the price be just right for what you’re getting out of the box?

I'm left-handed. Yet when it comes to computers, like most other lefties I know, I use a mouse with my right hand. It's just how I was taught. So I've never seen the need for a mouse that tries to accommodate both normal humans and sinister mutants.

But this category of the market exists because people want that flexibility anyway, so if you really must sit on the fence, the Avior 8200 is a good way to do it. Made by Mionix, the Avior is a fantastic gaming mouse that's also subtle in design. There are no enormous logos or flashy color schemes, build quality is superb with a nice feel to every button, and the soft matte finish to the exterior is extremely comfortable.

Silverstone cases are often praised by enthusiasts and HTPC builders alike, and with good reason. We last checked the Fortress FT03 which deserved TechSpot's Outstanding award and now two years later, the much anticipated Fortress FT04 has made it to market.

Upon first glance this latest version looks a lot like the FT01 that was released back in 2008. The FT04 shares similar dimensions to the FT01, with a slight increase in size that we assume simply means it can fit drives and longer graphics cards more comfortably.

Google stormed into the tablet market last year with the Nexus 7, a low-cost but high quality 7-inch tablet that significantly lowered the price barrier for Android media consumption.

Enter 2013, time to refresh the Nexus 7, receiving a serious speed boost, a better quality display, a rear camera and new features. At $220 the 2nd-gen Nexus tablet presents itself as a remarkably attractive proposition for people who want to read, watch or play.